Comment by thisone | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thisone | Hacker News Reader

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that's my problem with these articles and posts. They seem to suppose that there aren't more women because of sexism.

I'm not an industry researcher, so all I have to go on is my experiences.

I was a tiny kid, playing with Simons BASIC and having fun. But I never thought of it as a career path. No one I knew was in IT, no one in the family, or friend's families was in IT.

At school it wasn't something that was talked about as a career path (though nursing and teaching were).

I didn't realize I wanted to be a developer until I got a random part time job at university and built websites and databases. (I was majoring in engineering at the time)

That left me with a big gap in skill set from everyone else my age who had been playing around with tech since they were pre-teens.

But things are relatively hunky-dory now.

But I always think, what if I hadn't gotten that random job? Why hadn't I been exposed to this career before then?

Would it have been industry sexism that meant I wasn't a developer? No. It would have been lack of exposure to the possibility at a young age.

> Would it have been industry sexism that meant I wasn't a developer? No. It would have been lack of exposure to the possibility at a young age.

Not being told that certain opportunities are open to you because of your gender is sexism. This goes beyond child hood. People assume because of you're gender you will or will not be into certain job prospects and other activities. This is sexism.

But is that sexism in the IT industry, or is that stereotyping in the larger community about the IT industry?

Meh.

I wasn't told it was a possibility either, and I'm male and went to an all male school. Depending on how old you are (I'm mid 30s now so school in the early 90s) and how behind the times your teachers were, I reckon it was pretty common for people not to understand that there was a career to be had in computers. This could be down to plain ignorance of how important they were going to become. I only realised it was an interest after starting and hating an engineering course in 96, because all school ever told me was 'here is a machine you can use to write documents and make pictures'.

Of course if the reason she wasn't told was because of her gender then sure, inherent sexism.

I don't think that's what thisone was getting at. While I was growing up (late 80's into 90's), developing software and working on computers wasn't encouraged for a career path, for both boys and girls. It was always referred to as a hobby and one that wasn't looked upon very highly. Somehow I had a natural attraction to working with computers and software and that took me to where I am today working as a software engineer. My parents didn't even own a computer until I convinced them that I needed one for high school.

If I hadn't gone into software, I may have ended up in some other engineering discipline. Growing up I saw both boys and girls encouraged to go into engineering, but not into computers. Even as a male, I feel I'm working in software despite the culture I grew up with as a child.

It was always referred to as a hobby and one that wasn't looked upon very highly.

I never see this point come up much but I can tell you that when I was growing up "geek" was a pejorative term and the guys who were into computers were largely social outcasts. I can remember in high school the kinds of guys who sat on IRC chatting with their little "cyber friends" being made fun of. And I don't think they ever got much of a chance to "exclude" girls since my bet is most of them never had much luck getting one to talk to them in the first place. I don't doubt that sexism helps fuel the gender gap we see in tech, but sometimes it seems like people forget that the original demographic in this industry was by and large made up of socially awkward males who pursued their hobby despite being looked down upon and excluded by others, not because of the heaps of encouragement they were receiving.

The same kind of logic would lead us to believe that the dearth of men in nursing is a result of sexism against men.

It is.

It's really more of sexism against women, in the sense that nursing (and teaching) is one of a small set of careers traditionally open to women, and so they clustered.

Like Jews and finance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_antisemitism#Restricti...

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